A River Sutra (8 page)

The boy's sighdess eyes seemed fixed on infinity, and it seemed to Master Mohan that the candies in the shrouded chandeliers were leaping into flame, ignited by Imrat's innocent devotion as he sang,

"In the very spasm of death I see Your face.
0, the wonder of my submission.
0, the wonder of Your protection. "

Listening to the purity of each note, Master Mohan felt himself being lifted into another dimension, into the mystic raptures of the Sufis who were sometimes moved to dance by such music. For the first time he understood why the Sufis believed that once a man began to dance in the transport of his ecstasy, the singers must continue until the man stopped dancing lest the sudden breaking of the dancer's trance should kill him.

• "The heat of Your presence Blinds my eyes. Blisters my skin. Shrivels my flesh."

The great sahib rose to his feet. Master Mohan wondered if the great sahib was about to dance as music poured out of that young throat which carried in it too great a knowledge of the world.

In the flickering light of the candles Master Mohan thought he saw something glint in the sahib's hand. The musicians were smiling ingratiatingly, waiting for the great sahib to circle the boy's head with money before flinging it to them. Now Master Mohan could not see Imrat, dwarfed by the shadow of the man standing in front of him as he sang again,

The great sahib turned around and Master Mohan thought he saw tears on his cheeks. "Such a voice is not human. What will happen to music if this is the standard by which God judges us?"

"In the very spasm of death I see Your face. O, the wonder of my submission. 0, the wonder of Your protection ... "

Master Mohan could hear his wife cursing. He did not know his own screams echoed the blind boy's as he screamed and screamed and screamed.

"What happened? Why was the music teacher screaming?"

"Wouldn't you scream if you saw a mem slitting a boy's throat?"
"The great sahib killed the boy?" I asked in horror. "Why? Why would he do such a thing?"
"Why does a man steal an object of worship so no one but himself can enjoy it?"
"But did the police catch the great sahib?"
"Of course not. He was a rich man." Tariq Mia pushed the chess table aside and rose stiffly to his feet. "The two musicians were charged with the murder."
"What happened to Master Mohan?"
Tariq Mia bent over to remove the record from the gramophone. "Oh, he lived here with me for several months. Eventually I convinced him he was not responsible for the boy's death. Then he left. Now, little brother, I must join my students."
I got up as Tariq Mia slid the record back into the old yellow folder. "Where did he go? Back to Calcutta? To his wife and children?"
Tariq Mia held the record out to me. "Would you like to take this home and listen to the boy's singing again?"
I was appalled by the suggestion. He laughed at my reaction. "You mustn't be so frightened of love, little brother."
Still chuckling at my distress, he took my arm and led me from the veranda, over the marble platform toward the bridge.
"What happened to the music teacher, Tariq Mia?" I persisted.
"He decided to return to his family. But he threw himself under the train before it reached Calcutta."
"Why?"
Tariq Mia stretched up to kiss my cheek, then gendy pushed me onto the bridge. "Perhaps he could not exist without loving someone as he had loved the blind child. I don't know the answer, little brother. It is only a story about the human heart."
Crossing the bridge, I did not turn around to wave good-bye. I was upset by the old mullah s accusation that I did not understand the world. Especially, I told myself, when all Tariq Mia's knowledge of the world had not prevented the poor music teacher from taking his own life.
Loud laughter pierced the morning silence as I walked through the jungle back to the bungalow. The Vano village women were collecting fuel by the sides of the mud path.
Through the undergrowth I could see their slender brown arms reaching for the dry branches fallen on the mud. As I approached them I saw the saris sliding from their shoulders, baring their waists and the curve of their full breasts to my view as they stacked bundles of wood onto the small donkeys grazing under the trees.
The sturdy bodies of the village women, their catlike faces with the triangular tattoo marks high on each cheekbone, were such a relief after Tariq Mia's story that I returned their greetings with uncharacteristic warmth.
They nudged each other in surprise. "The sahib finds your face pretty today, Rano."
"It must be the season. Spring rouses even old tigers from their rest."
"It's true. Don't you see a prowl to the sahib's walk this morning?"
Their provocative laughter followed me down the gentle incline of the path. "Be careful not to walk alone, sisters. The mango trees are in bloom."
"Kama must be sharpening his arrows of blossoms and stringing his bow with bees, sisters. Take care the sahib does not lure us to a seduction."
I could not help smiling at the women's references to Kama, God of Love, with his sugarcane bow strung with honeybees and his five flowered arrows of desire. There was indeed a mood of longing in the jungle. Small flowers foamed over the leaves of the mango trees, the wind carried the scent of lemon blossoms and sandalwood to my nostrils.
The call of the koil bird, that strange imitation "of a woman's cry at the moment of sexual fulfillment, hung suspended in the air, and I felt mythology might at any moment become reality. That Kama might suddenly draw his sugarcane bow, known as the Exciter of Madness, and unleash one of his five arrows on a hapless wanderer who would then crave some unsuspecting woman as an incarnation of Delight, the Goddess of Involuntary Allure. And to make sure of victory Kama might call on his friends—Spring with his ruthless hands and his beautiful body clothed only in lotus buds, or the Malayan Wind carrying the aromatic perfumes of the South, or most dangerous of all, Amorous Mood.
Grateful to the laughing women for lifting my gloom, I turned to wave at them but they had disappeared and only the green canopy of the jungle rustled over the hill.
Mr. Chagla leaned from the window of his office as I opened the small wooden gate at the back entrance to the bungalow. "Sir! Sir! One minute, sir."
He hurried into the garden, the slight roll to his gait emphasizing the endearing roundness of his whole appearance. Although Mr. Chagla bicycles a good two hours every day, from the town of Rudra to the bungalow and back again, his exertions seem to make little impression on his plump body or interfere with the genial innocence of his open nature, which finds delight in the smallest incident.
"The sugarcane men came while you were on your walk, sir."
"I'm sorry, Chagla. I was unavoidably detained at the mosque."
"Mention not, sir. I purchased three bundles. At this very time they are stacked against the kitchen wall. We will have lots of juice for the visitors."
He handed me a letter with the indulgence of a parent handing a child a toy and I felt his expectant gaze on my face as I read.
The letter was from an old colleague. "My nephew, Nitin Bose, will be coming to your bungalow for a few weeks' leave. He is interested in tribal customs. He is a very brilliant young man and has recently been made a director of a big tea company. Please keep an eye on him. I count on your understanding and discretion."
"Well, sir? Which suite shall I prepare?" Mr. Chagla's smile tightened the shining skin of his round face.
"The letter doesn't say when the visitor is arriving."
"We must prepare for all eventualities, sir. Shall I move in extra beds at least?"
"We are only expecting one young man. No mention is made of a wife or children." The brown eyes lost their bright anticipation and I added hurriedly, "But send me a glass of sugarcane juice while I read the post. If it is sweet enough, we'll buy some more to make cane sugar."

Cheered by an opportunity to give pleasure, Mr. Chagla moved toward the kitchen with his rolling walk.

My house had already been swept and dusted. The green-painted wooden shutters were open and the papers on my table rusded in the breeze. I sat down to work but found I could not concentrate on the list of accounts Mr. Chagla had prepared for my approval.

The teasing of the women had left me restless. Behind me I could hear the rushing of the waterfalls. I pushed the papers away and walked to the end of my small lawn to look down at the Narmada River.

At noon the sun is so strong its harsh light gives the river the appearance of beaten metal, but at this hour the morning light catches every nuance of the water's movement. Below me the wind was tossing the rippling waves up so that they sparkled in the light, before disappearing into the shadows below. I watched the water sparkling and disappearing, sparkling and disappearing, like the anklets encircling a woman's foot, and thought of the Ascetic watching the dancing woman formed by the rivulets from his own penance.

A flock of parakeets, messengers of Kama, God of Love, settled in a green cloud on the mango tree shading my head. I smiled, remembering how the Ascetic had sneered at Kama's power, even though the gods had warned the Ascetic that he too must feel Desire for without Desire the play of the worlds would cease.

But still the Ascetic had sneered as he was pierced by the five flower-tipped arrows unleashed by Kama from his sugarcane bow—the Enchanter, the Inflamer, the Parcher, the Paroxysm of Desire, the Carrier of Death.

Then Maya, the Illusion of the Worlds, had appeared—the only woman capable of arousing the lust of the Destroyer of Worlds. Enraged at the destruction of his meditation, the Ascetic had opened his third eye, the Lotus of Command, and reduced Kama to ashes, even as he himself was being consumed by Desire.

Suddenly I was alarmed by the prospect of our new visitor. My colleague's letter had said his nephew was interested in tribal customs, but what did the young man really know about the beliefs of the tribals?

Did he know the goddess who had incinerated even the Great Ascetic in the fires of longing, the goddess whose power had been acknowledged by the ancient sages with such fearful names as the Terrible One, the Implacable Mother, the Dark Lady, the Destroyer of Time, the Everlasting Dream—did he know the goddess had been worshipped by the tribal inhabitants of these jungles for thousands of years?

Now the teasing of the Vano women seemed more threatening than Tariq Mia's tale of murder and suicide. Would a brilliant mind be enough to protect the young mem from the dark forces of the jungles, from the tribal worship of that Desire which even their conquerors had acknowledged to be invincible, describing it as the firstborn seed of the mind?

"Sir, taste this." Mr. Chagla was standing at my side with a glass of sugarcane juice. "You will definitely find it up to the mark, sir."

His eager face smiled encouragingly at me, pulling me back into the day.

A full month passed before I heard from my colleague again. By then the clusters of mango blossoms had hardened into fruit and I had long forgotten my brief moment of anxiety.

Those varieties of mangoes not sweet enough to eat were already sliced and pickled, marinating in lemon juice in large glass jars on the ledge outside the pantry. Mr. Chagla had arranged for the delivery of bundles of sugarcane and I had myself stirred the boiling cane juice. Now there were enough hard rounds of brown cane sugar sitting in the dark, net-covered larder to last us through the monsoons.

Mr. Chagla laughed when I passed him the telegram from my old colleague, informing me that Nitin Bose was arriving by train the next day.

"We will have no juice for him, sahib. But don't worry. The cook will some way revive Mr. Bose from his dusty journey."